[coldpie]

> THIS. Why is this PoV even controversial?

Because it is stating that the government should control private behavior, which bumps into free speech and freedom of association issues. That gets pretty controversial.

There are other solutions to the stated problem:

> Given their market dominance, they should absolutely not have any right to refuse service.

The fix is to address the precondition in that statement: their market dominance. If a single entity is so powerful that it can control entire markets, then the problem is not what it does with that power, but that it has that power in the first place.

The solution to this problem is enforcing our existing anti-trust laws, not passing new laws to compel private behavior. We should not have only one or two entities that control this entire market. That's a sign of a broken market, and that's what must be addressed.

[const_cast]

We already compel private behavior all the time when the private sector starts acting public - i.e. by running infrastructure and being vital to the function of the public.

The real solution IMO is even more unpopular: nationalize them. If it's a public service it should be handled by the public sector, such that the entirety of the constitution applies. We might even consider funding it not with payment fees, but tax dollars. Every American has a desire to have reliable instant transactions. So they should all pay.

Effectively, they already are - the 2-3% tax on card processors is a tax. If we nationalize it, we can even lower it, since we'd not longer be burdened by the pursuit of profit.

[danaris]

The companies in question are monopolies. If you can't get your payments processed by Visa and Mastercard, you are effectively debanked.

We collectively agreed long ago that monopolies do not get to enjoy the same freedoms that other companies do.

[coldpie]

> We collectively agreed long ago that monopolies do not get to enjoy the same freedoms that other companies do.

I think that's generally only the case for natural monopolies, such as power infrastructure, where breaking them up isn't really a feasible solution (ie we don't want 20 different power lines running to each house). I don't think payment processing meets that standard, we could easily break them up and re-introduce competition into the market.

[bluefirebrand]

Having a payment processing industry with a lot of competing providers would be miserable

Imagine having to support every single type of provider for every transaction. I don't think it is a good idea at all

[SirMaster]

It wouldn't be so bad if they all supported some same standard.

[bluefirebrand]

I don't think this would happen without massive regulation.

And operating in different regulatory markets across the world is likely difficult

[danaris]

a) One way or another, that's "not letting them enjoy the same freedoms as other companies"

b) How would you then prevent them from re-amalgamating the way Verizon and AT&T did after the Baby Bell breakup? Not just for a few years afterward, but ever?

c) I think that payment processors actually make a pretty convincing natural monopoly: consider that if we had 400 payment processors with no common interface protocol between them (and let's face it, without being forced to, companies aren't going to make such a standard), your Baby Visa #27 credit card wouldn't be accepted at a merchant who only accepts Baby Mastercard #100-200 cards. And even accepting that many different payment processors would be pretty onerous.

Remember, this isn't the card issuers we're talking about; this is the backend processors. The only reason our current "universal" credit card infrastructure works is because nearly everyone takes Mastercard and Visa, and most credit cards—and many debit cards—are either Mastercard or Visa. Sure, it would be possible to create some kind of an interchange standard that all 400 processors would follow, but again, where's the incentive for any single processor?

[coldpie]

> How would you then prevent them from re-amalgamating the way Verizon and AT&T did after the Baby Bell breakup? Not just for a few years afterward, but ever?

By continuing to enforce anti-trust legislation, though this time on the opposite M&A end.

> I think that payment processors actually make a pretty convincing natural monopoly

I guess I don't know enough to make an authoritative statement here, but I don't personally find this argument super convincing. I expect the actual breakup would be on the order of like 6-20 companies at most, and it wouldn't be rocket science for some middle-man to abstract out the processing. We solve many harder problems than that in the software industry every day.

But either way, it's a valid argument, and I think a court would be the right place to duke it out. If they are indeed a natural monopoly, then I agree it would be appropriate to start placing limits on their behavior.

[woodrowbarlow]

i'd add, they're also not private. i mean, i know a publy-traded company is "in the private sector", but it's still a collectively-owned resource and that's a lot different from compelling a privately-owned company.

[woodrowbarlow]

you are taking it for granted that corporations should largely be given the same civil rights as private citizens, as decided in citizens united v. FEC, but in my view this was one of the worst decisions to ever come out of the supreme court.

[coldpie]

Hmm, maybe, I haven't thought about it much. The angle I'm taking is, as a private citizen I choose not to do business with entities I think are immoral, such as Amazon and Home Depot and Hobby Lobby and Uline and Tesla. If I were a business owner, I would prefer to continue to not to do business with those entities and I'd be pretty pissed if I was forced to by the government. That does seem to agree with your "same rights as private citizens" framing, yes, though I'm not sure I'd go so far as to defend the CU decision. I dunno. Interesting question, I'd welcome your thoughts on this.

[woodrowbarlow]

if we are to limit the conversation to privately-owned companies, you and i are likely philosophically aligned -- because the business has a person as an owner, and that person has rights. but when a business is publicly-traded, and no longer has a person as a sole owner, i believe many of those rights (which never belonged to the business, and always to the person) should evaporate.

[vunderba]

Regulatory capture and regional monopolies aren't going anyway any time soon. Let's throw out another hypothetical.

How would you feel if the only broadband ISP in your area automatically blocked entire swaths of websites from you on the grounds that the ISP felt they were "immoral" (whatever that means)? And yes I know VPNs exist but that is missing the point.

Payment processors are "pipelines" in the same manner as ISPs should be. If the major ones (VISA/MC) block you from doing business, that's putting someone's entire livelihood at risk.

EDIT: For clarification, I agree that antitrust has never been weaker and that we do need better trust-busting. I just think that it is more realistic to focus on legislation around payment processors MC/VISA atm.

[coldpie]

I agree natural monopolies such as ISPs can justify additional regulation. I'm not convinced payment processors are natural monopolies (see sibling thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44683153 ).

> I just think that it is more realistic to focus on legislation around payment processors MC/VISA atm.

I think it would be really, really, really hard to pass legislation requiring payment processors to service all customers, especially if you're using porn video games as the champion of your cause. Even if it did pass, I suspect it'd be pretty quickly declared unconstitutional and personally, I think that would be the correct call.

We already have anti-trust laws. We've used them before. "All" we have to do is enforce them.

[charlieyu1]

The alternative is to allow private behavior to do the dirty jobs instead, which is even worse

[_DeadFred_]

This is how it's been done in the USA since 9/11. Data isn't subpoenaed (would getting into people's rights) it's just bought (no rights violation). Controls aren't from the government, they are 'implementing industry standards'. Want to silence someone? Deplatform them. Want to deny access? Flag them with an opaque trust score. No constitutional rights are violated.

[coldpie]

Indeed, breaking up the too-big companies nicely solves several of these issues. It's much harder to deplatform someone if there are a dozen viable social media/video/critical Internet infrastructure companies, instead of just one or two.

[FirmwareBurner]

>not passing new laws to compel private behavior.

I have IRL facepalmed reading this. This comment gave me the equivalent exposure to 10 hours on X/Twitter. Mate, the reason you now have clean air, safe to eat food and drinking water is BECAUSE OF government compelling private behavior.

With your logic we should have just waited for free market competition to kick in for Cocal-Cola and McDonalds to decide on their own to stop putting arsenic into our food or for Ford and GM to produce engines with lower emissions.

The reason we have government compelling private behavior is that corporate interests are more likely and more easily to collude to fuck over the consumer together for profit, than consumers can do the same in order to intact desired change on the free market.

[coldpie]

You are correct, I don't think not being able to purchase porn games rises to the same level of danger as unsafe food or climate change, to require the government to tell businesses how they may operate.

> With your logic we should have just waited for free market competition to kick in Cocal cola and McDonalds to deiced on their own to stop putting arsenic into our food.

I don't think that's a fair comparison. No one is dying here. I do think the government should step into this market and perform major intervention by breaking up the big two companies into many little ones who can compete. After that, some payment processors may choose to support these business models despite the hit to their stock price (or whatever Visa's dumb argument is for not allowing these games).

[FirmwareBurner]

>I don't think not being able to purchase porn games rises to the same level of danger as unsafe food or climate change

Holy cow, so many comments here and you still missed the point by a mile. The point isn't video games, the point is payment processors shouldn't be arbiters on what you buy. Because if they can stop you buying/selling video games, they can do the same for other stuff. Where does their right to censor you begin and end?

[coldpie]

> the point is payment processors shouldn't be arbiters on what you buy. Because if they can stop you buying/selling video games, they can do the same for other stuff.

We both agree this is bad. What we are discussing is how best to solve it.

In the scenario where we enforced existing anti-trust law and broke up the big 2 to form many smaller payment processors, one of the newly formed processors could pick up the business that the pickier processors don't want and take that profit, right? So it solves the problem, without having to pass any controversial new laws about compelling private business behavior.

[notjoemama]

> I have IRL facepalmed reading this. This comment gave me the equivalent exposure to 10 hours on X/Twitter.

I don't know man, jumping into a conversation like this is a great way to get people to NOT listen. I agree with your following point and would add I find these matters more complicated. For example, you wouldn't be typing a comment on this site without the kind of corporate freedom that raised the standard of living for the entire planet resulting in a shared technological advancement. Seems this is always a trade off, how much freedom are you willing to give up for centralized fascist governmental control?

[FirmwareBurner]

>I don't know man, jumping into a conversation like this is a great way to get people to NOT listen.

Nobody said I was wrong though. You can disagree with the messenger, but you can't disagree with the message.

[notjoemama]

I'm saying you're wrong because you cannot substantiate your point. Quantify it and I will admit I'm wrong.

[Goronmon]

That gets pretty controversial.

Is this issue always controversial?

Is it controversial that companies aren't allowed to refuse service based on gender or race (in the US at least)?

[coldpie]

> Is it controversial that companies aren't allowed to refuse service based on gender or race (in the US at least)?

Those are legal categories known as "protected classes," and yeah, it was and is pretty controversial[1]. I think you'd have a hard time getting purchasers of porn games declared a protected class.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 ; further reading, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group

[Goronmon]

Actually, it's not really controversial anymore [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964